Mach 5

Yeah, I had to do it.With 5 days left, Mach 5 was just begging to be the title. That or maybe some kind of Voltron title. Anyway, I get ever closer to 11-15 and the tension is beginning to really build. One the one hand, I know what I have to do, and I am confident that I can finish all of it. What stresses me out, I mean, what stresses me the hell out, is I have no idea if any of the rest of it will be finished. I don’t know if I have backgrounds, I don’t know how many animations I’ll have, I don’t know how long any of that will take to install into the system and get working correctly. That’s the stress. So I find myself staying up late working and hoping that the other parts will come together as promised. Even if I finish and the other parts aren’t, then I cannot submit. So I guess the real issue is this : Once I gave responsibility, I gave up control. Now I cannot do all of it myself and must rely on my Team to come through for me.

-Anyway, yesterday I finished off the first level scripting. So that’s nice. The scenes work out really well. They look just like they are supposed to. Which is to say they look like those old in game cinematics that old Super Nintendo games have. The trick I figured out works really well, so I’m confident that the 2nd level scripting (on tap for tonight) will be even faster and better. What I don’t have are real animations in the scenes yet. I don’t want to do the work for animations and then have to re do the work after I get different animations. So right now it’s all placeholder stuff.In the meantime I figured out how to have really nice animations. It occurred to me that I already have an animation controller built into the engine. I think that I may be able to use that. So I’ll set a state, update the real position of the PC and then call the DrawZero() function (Or DrawEnemies() Function). If I do that on a loop and then change the frame like the engine does I should get the smooth animations of the Game Engine instead of the jilted animations of the Scripting Engine.

-As far as that goes, I’ve noticed the script isn’t doing what I want. The lines were all written to be spoken, and in fact that is still the plan for the finished game. However, the timing is a little off as text, so some of the jokes fall just a little flat. Also, The Thief talks too damn much. Again, the lines are written to be read at a pretty quick cadence, but having to push the (next) key 3 times for one sentence is a little much. Thankfully, in the Demo there aren’t very many of these bits of glass anyway.

-Still to do:1) Tweak the damage system after I get combat animations. Right now Zero hits too hard, so enemies drop in only 2 or 3 hits. They should be a little more resilient. So either I can make Zero do less damage or give the Enemies more health (I think I’ll do that) then balance it again after the animations are in.2) Credits3) Chapter Titles. I’m going to have these float by in the right screens (like in Heroes). They’ll say stuff like : “Chapter 1 : The Great Escape” “Chapter 2 : Guards! Guards!” “Chapter 3 : Buried Alive” and “Chapter 4 : Crypt Raider”4) Second Level Scripting, namely the first Skeleton encounter and the boss’ two scenes.Today I’m planning to finish the scripting and get those titles installed. The actual titles may change depending on my mood.5) Install the new animations and background. *sigh* Hopefully tomorrow.